Yeah, it’s liable to be birds for a while, though I missed my chance at some deer the other morning. I try to keep variety in mind, but at this time of year? Ya got birds.
The morning after the overnight snow storm, the sun broke out (which usually happens in NC, so credit for that at least,) and I was out using the light. The birds were extremely happy with the new selection of feeders that
Naturally, I wasn’t going to leave the snow pics at just some night time exposures – not when we got such a decent, scenic coverage. It’s been a few years since we had a proper snow, and my basic attitude is, once a year, for photos’ sake, and that’s it.
Nothing too scenic here, just the northern portion of the backyard pond – the wood ducks from
… of the host, because I didn’t do it.
If you came here in the past day and didn’t find anything, it’s because my website host switched their content to a new server, which I had plenty of notice was going to happen. And the main site went fine, but the blog disappeared entirely. I left it for a few hours, figuring that it was DNS woes of some kind (even though the main site,
… I went out to get some pics.
The snow started in a very lackluster manner, just dusting the colder surfaces, and kept that up for hours, but by 11 PM it was getting more serious, and a little after midnight I went out to capture some night exposures. It was quite bright out there, from the low cloud cover reflecting the lights of the town to the streetlight on the opposite
So, did I get anything else for World Waterfowl Day? Well, read the title.
After a couple of days with no sign of them, the two pairs of wood ducks returned again this morning, being a little more brazen than before in that they ventured much further out into the open pond than previously. However, this did not mean that they treated my presence with less suspicion. The Girlfriend was watching from
Now, this… this one makes me pleased. Actually, psyched.
Remember last week when I said that cedar waxwings had some of the best coloration of the North American birds? Well, wood ducks (Aix sponsa) have them beat, or at least the males do the females are considerably less flamboyant, which we’ll see in a moment.
More importantly, however, was that this one, and three more, were all spotted
Man, I hate finding things out too late, but at least this time I’m not, though it’s certainly cutting it close. I just happened to check out the calendar for Sylvan Heights Bird Park and discovered that tomorrow, January 17th, is a whole new holiday (for realsies):
Early this morning before the temperature had risen above freezing, the local pair of red-shouldered hawks (Buteo lineatus) had perched together for a few minutes in the backyard, immediately after the female had taken unsuccessful shots at two possible meals, one of them an unidentified bird. We rarely see them together, and so far never as close as this, though we know
It’s funny – I finally sat down yesterday to clear out the burgeoning Sort folder of new images, slotting them into their respectful spots (which includes the trash bin,) and less than 24 hours later, that folder is already up to 71 images. Some of those you’ve already seen, since the occultation photos came in there, but some will show up on Friday.
For now, we have a handful that
So I did indeed get out to view the occultation of Mars by the mean ol’ moon (ours, I mean, not any of the other planets’,) and even snagged a couple of video clips. The nice thing was, Mars was bright enough to be seen near the moon with only a slight overexposure of the moon itself, so that worked out acceptably well.
You can see it easily down there at the bottom,
